Tennessee officials are waging their own battle against members of a violent Venezuelan gang called Tren de Aragua as left-leaning officials push back on deportations of illegal immigrants, including gang members.

The Trump administration recently deported nearly 240 TdA members to El Salvador — an action that came despite U.S. District Judge James Boasberg’s order to halt deportations of illegal immigrants under a wartime powers act that President Donald Trump invoked on Friday.

The Alien Enemies Act of 1798 allows the deportation of natives and citizens of an enemy nation without a hearing and has been invoked three times before, during the War of 1812, World War I and World War II.

“President Trump has the complete, constitutional authority to deport criminal illegal aliens, especially the members of Foreign Terrorist Organizations like Tren de Aragua,” Republican Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn told Fox News Digital in a statement. “With his deportation of hundreds of gang members to El Salvador, the President is fully complying with judicial orders and upholding the rule of law.”

Four suspects, including a Tren de Aragua member, have been arrested in Hamilton County, Tennessee, in a sex-trafficking sting. (Hamilton County/Valerie Schremp Hahn/St. Louis Post-Dispatch/Tribune News Service)

On Nov. 19, 2024, ICE ERO officials arrested Luis Alejandro Ruiz-Godoy, who was wanted on outstanding international warrants, a spokesperson with the Memphis Police Department said. Days later FBI officials arrested four individuals, including one Tren de Aragua member, in a Chattanooga sex trafficking sting.

Tennessee’s Human Trafficking Task Force obtained information that led them to a hotel in Hamilton County, where law enforcement encountered the four suspects and confirmed that they were part of a human sex trafficking operation.

Tabor said it is “100%” more difficult for law enforcement from smaller cities and states that do not typically deal with gangs like TdA to identify and capture its members than in larger cities like New York, Chicago and Houston.

“What you’re seeing is these gangs and associated criminals were capitalizing on the fact that many of these small-town sheriffs’ offices and metropolitan police departments had no clue who they were,” the former DEA agent explained. “They had no idea how to get help to find out who these people were because the federal government didn’t care. And all that has changed since Trump came in.”

By invoking the Foreign Enemies Act, the administration has made it easier to cut “through a lot of red tape” to detain TdA members, Tabor said.

Fox News Digital’s Emma Colton and Alexandra Koch contributed to this report.